Battle of Shanghai

The Battle of Shanghai was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War, occurring from 13 August to 26 November 1937 when the Imperial Japanese Army besieged the key port city of Shanghai in China. The foreigners from the city center were evacuated as the Imperial Japanese Navy began to bombard the city, and 300,000 Japanese troops assaulted the city, defended by 700,000 poorly-trained Kuomintang troops. The Japanese made amphibious landings on Hangzhou Bay and the Yangtze River to flank the Chinese, and the Chinese fought the Japanese in and around Shanghai for three months. China lost a significant portion of its troops while failing to elicit Western aid as originally hoped for, but the Japanese were demoralized, with the fallacies of military and cultural superiority being cast away as a result of the battle.